Tag Archives: tips for perch

So I went back to treasure island in the San Francisco Bay recently! This marks my third trip out to try to fish. Only this time, there weren’t 3 people blocking off the entire pier by casting all over hell. Thanks guys, but please just learn to cast straight…

Anyways! Went out on a Sunday recently. I was originally aiming to get there around 6:50am with the sunrise:

Tide table

As you can see, there was a low tide about an hour before sunrise. Figured I’d beat the crowd and get there first and fish the tide as it came in. Also the wind was supposed to pick up later in the day, so I thought that was going to be my only opportunity.

Turns out I snoozed out and woke up around 12pm instead d= I later went outside to get something from my car and found it was caaallllmmm outside, barely any wind! What the heck forecast! So I packed up real quick, and headed out. Wound up arriving around 5:45 PM. Was surprised as I walked up to find not a single person fishing the old pier.

Happily I hopped down on the right side of the pier to try my luck with gulp camo sandworms (surf fishermen report these things working wonders for perch).

right side of the pier

Didn’t even get a nibble. Not even a NIBBLE. You gotta be kidding me. I used to poke pole with these things and caught rock cod, monkeyface eels, heck even an undersized ling or two with them.

At first I was thinking well maybe its just a bad day. It wasn’t flat water, swells were kinda big… But then I thought, no, that can’t be right. Perch live and eat in the beach swells, they couldn’t be happier for this kind of weather since it kicks up food and what not.

So I tried switching up baits to mussels and instantly started getting bites. Seriously the perch on Treasure island are so spoiled…But I didn’t wind up landing anything on the right side. Decided to try my luck on the left side of the pier: